Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), such as mobile handset device manufacturers, aim to protect their software assets running on any of a variety of hardware platforms (e.g., processing device, System-on-a-Chip (SoC), etc.) available in the market. This is because OEMs have assets that create a unique look and feel for their respective devices and these software assets require protection from clone manufacturers who have access to the same hardware platforms and seek to copy the OEM's software asset.
One approach for providing protection for OEMs and their software assets has been to label hardware of the hardware platform with OEM specific identifiers that the OEM software assets could then use for verification purposes. However, in practice, this approach turns generic hardware into non-generic hardware, as the hardware is now programmed specifically for the OEM via the OEM-specific identifier. Programming of the OEM-specific identifiers into hardware platforms should occur in a trusted environment (e.g., before delivering the hardware to OEMs) in order to ensure the correct OEM identifiers are used. This, in turn, causes the hardware manufacturer to have complex inventory management issues and logistics.